“I may have said you were very handsome, single and very much gay.”
“How delightful.” Now I banged my hands on the table, making the couple nearby jump.
I was tired. I didn’t want any bloody dessert, and I just wanted to make all of this go away.
“I’m going to call it a night,” I declared, staring at my half-eaten plate. “I just… It’s been a long day, and I just want to sleep.”
“That’s okay, darling.” Mum giggled. “I am going to knock at eight, ready for breakfast and have all the gossip for you. Mr Riley won’t know what hit him.”
“Mum, he won’t be gay, he won’t be interested, and he definitely will not appreciate being stalked by a couple of pensioners. Seriously. Enjoy the food and the music.”
“See you in the morning!” Mum laughed. “Sleep well, darling. Big day tomorrow.”
Nah, it wasn’t. Because I would still be stuck here with nothing better to do than listen to my parents natter on and get a sunburn. And eat my weight in food.
So I did what I did. I stumbled back to my weird-ass bungalow-villa-hotel-room-thing and drew the curtains until the room was pitch black. Then I flung myself on the bed, still in my clothes and pulled the blanket over my head.
Chapter 2
Fox
“Another disaster on a grand scale,” I muttered under my breath, as Pawel came back with a dripping tray of shots. It was always like this. First night overkill, and by tomorrow the lot of them would be whining on their sun loungers, asking if I had any paracetamol and demanding water and fresh towels.
“Guys,” I moaned.
“Awww, don’t be a party pooper, Riley,” Colin groaned. “Let loose, you don’t have to be Headmaster Riley here.”
Well, no. But yeah. Day one, and I was alreadypissed off.
“We have bad things to do,” Thomas shouted, lifting his shot glass up in the air. Our old war-cry, from years and years ago, when we’d been young and stupid and perhaps a little too carefree. And now here was Jordyn, slithering his lithe little body onto Thomas’s lap and knotting his arm with his, attempting to do some kind of…
I couldn’t watch. It still hurt, and I shouldn’t care and it had been months and I should be over…over all of this.
I wasn’t, and that in itself was deeply problematic. As was the evil stare I threw Jordyn’s way as he stuck his tongue out at me.
He was twenty-one. The rest of us? All forty-something. I’d known Huw since school. Four of us had known each other since uni, played on the same football teams and the rest of our ten-man-strong holiday posse? Uni friends, boyfriends, someone’s personal trainer who’d weirdly rocked up one year and stayed. And Thomas. Who had been my boyfriend for years. Fiancé. The future had been so bright, wedding plans, perhaps having children?
Zero lessons had been learned between the lot of us, and we were still messing around like teenagers, pretending that this? This was the epitome of life, all of us in our best years with brilliance and success yet to come.
Or some shit.
Okay, I needed to mind my language, even in this inner monologue of mine. I needed to calm the fuck down and yes, perhaps admit that coming along this year had been a massive, huge, ginormous declaration of stupidity on my part.
Thomas had left me nine months ago. How long his thing with Jordyn had been a thing? I didn’t want to know. I refused to acknowledge that it had probably been… Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Okay, when Andy had started planning this year’s summer break, and we’d all paid our deposits and all that, I’d done it as if on automatic. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that Thomas would tag along. I mean? He’d been part of this group for years, but he’d been my partner. Now he no longer was, and what the hell was I supposed to do with that? Lick my wounds and just move on? The decent thing would have been for him to discreetly step back and decline the kind invitation to once again join us for our yearly holiday.
But that would have had to include Thomas being a decent human being and not the two-timing, cheating bastard he obviously was.
“You okay?”
Life lessons. My teacher training and almost fifteen years of working in education had taught me nothing. Absolutely nothing, as I once again swore on the inside yet smiled at poor Simon next to me, who already had a red face and was sweating profusely.
“Water for you, Si,” I said softly, and patted him on his arm. “Remember Sardinia last year? Not a good look on you, mate.”
“Wasn’t my fault I fell asleep on the beach and got eaten alive by sandflies,” he grumped, clinking his glass with mine. “And anyway. My gorgeous husband has promised to be my guardian angel this week and protect me from all my usual stupidities.”
